Teenager rescued with seven others from a broken cable car over a Pakistan gorge says it was a miracle
broken cable car that was dangling precariously hundreds of metres (yards) above a steep gorge was a miracle, a survivor said Wednesday. The teenager said he and the others felt repeatedly that death was imminent during the 16-hour ordeal.
The eight passengers were pulled from the cable car in several rescue attempts Tuesday. One of the youngest children was grabbed by a commando attached to a helicopter by rope.
A video of the rescue shows the rope swaying wildly as the child, secured by a harness, is pulled into the helicopter.
Because helicopters could not fly after sunset, rescuers constructed a makeshift chairlift from a wooden bed frame and ropes and approached the cable car using the one cable that was still intact, local police chief Nazir Ahmed said.
In the final stage of the risky operation, just before midnight Tuesday, rescuers and volunteers pulled a rope to lower the chairlift to the ground. Joyful shouts of «God is great» erupted as the chairlift came into view, carrying two boys in traditional white robes.
«I had heard stories about miracles, but I saw a miraculous rescue happening with my own eyes,» said 15-year-old Osama Sharif, one of the six boys who were in the cable car.
Locally made cable cars are a widely used form of transportation in the mountainous Battagram district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Gliding across steep valleys, they cut down travel time but often are poorly maintained and accident prone. Every year people die or are injured while travelling in them.
On Tuesday morning, the six boys got into the cable car to travel to their school across the ravine from their village.
